Food chain

“ The American frozen food industry, in close cooperation with producers, has continued research and development for the purpose of seeking better ways to bring the nutrition, quality, and taste of American agricultural products to consumers. ”

“ By February 1937 four detailed schemes for the storage of a balanced group of foodstuffs were ready, ranging from Plan I, an emergency scheme for feeding London for month, to Plan IV which would provide together with normal trade stocks, for months’ supply of wheat, four months’ supply of oilseeds, three months’ supply of sugar, a large supply of whale oil (for cooking fat and margarine) and quantities of canned meat, canned milk and cheese, together with no less than six months’ supply of feeding grains for animals. ”

“ The bread stuffs, as they are popularly termed, particularly wheat and wheat flour, maize, and rice, form very important articles of commerce, and enter largely into cultivation in various countries for home consumption and export. Russia, India, and the United States, carry on a very considerable trade in grain with other countries. Our local production being insufficient for food and manufactures, we import yearly immense quantities of grain and flour. ”

“ The food product ready, it is put to one of two uses—fed to the live stock from which we obtain our milk, butter, cheese, meat and meat products, or it is sent to factories where by means of much more labor and care it is further prepared for our table. By canning, as in case of fruits and vegetables, by milling of grains, or, if the product is a meat animal, by the many complicated processes of packing, the food is prepared for transportation. ”

“ Economy of Production.—Animal foods can never compete in cheapness of the nutrients with cereals and vegetables, as it takes six to eight pounds or more of a cereal, together with forage crops, to make a pound of meat. Hence the returns in food value are very much larger from the direct use of the cereals as human food, than from the feeding of cereals to cattle and the use of the meat. As the population of a country increases, and foods necessarily become more expensive, cereals are destined to replace animal foods to a great extent, solely as a matter of economy. ”

“ Ultimately their descendants could become uniformly healthy on rye bread and dairy products just like the highland Swiss were.
However, modern industrial farming and processing of foodstuffs significantly contributes to mass, widespread enervation in two ways. Humans will probably adjust to the first; the second will, I'm sure, prove insurmountable. First, industrially processed foods are a recent invention and our bodies have not yet adapted to digesting them. In a few more generations humans might be able to accomplish that and public health could improve on factory food. ”

“ It has already been pointed out that there is a growing tendency to purchase food materials on the basis of composition. New discoveries in the domains of plant composition and animal nutrition and the improved methods of rapid and accurate valuation will accelerate this tendency. Even now, manufacturers of food products print on cartons and in advertising matter quality reasons for the superior food values of certain articles. At least one firm produces two parallel sets of its manufactured foods, one for the man who does hard physical labor, and the other for the brain worker. ”

“ The staple grain feeds are corn, oats, wheat, barley and buckwheat. The grain by-products, bran, middlings and gluten feed, to which may be added corn meal, ground oats and ground barley.
Animal food of some kind is an essential to growth and egg-production. Skim milk and butter milk, fish scrap made from oil-free fish, beef scrap, fresh cut green bone and good grades of digester tankage are all excellent. But use only feeds of this character which are of prime quality. Oily fish, poor beef scrap and mouldy green bone will surely cause trouble. ”

“ The most essential part of Eltzbacher's work is the attempt to show how the necessary food-supply of Germany's 68,000,000 can be met without imports. Food is considered under its two great divisions:
(1) Body-builders and repairers.—Protein, chiefly contained in meat, eggs, milk, peas, beans, kernels, grain, &c.
(2) Energy-producers, [10] yielding heat and work.—Fats and oils (hydrocarbons) , with sugar and starch (carbohydrates) . ”

“ Here, in this densely-populated country, where we import so much of our food, cheese demands our most profound attention. The difficulties and cost of importing all kinds of meat, fish, and poultry are great, while cheese may be cheaply and deliberately brought to us from any part of the world where cows or goats can be fed, and it can be stored more readily and kept longer than other kinds of animal food. All that is required to render it, next to bread, the staple food of Britons is scientific cookery. ”

“ The United States Department of Agriculture has estimated that only 6.6 per cent. of our corn crop is used for human food, and of this, 3.4 per cent. is consumed by the farmers and their families.
The substitution of foods is no new thing. ”

“ The exigencies of a world food shortage and a shortage of shipping for food transport have made it necessary for food ministries and relief organizations to give careful consideration to the most economical selection of foods for import and distribution, both from the point of view of economy of space and weight and lack of deterioration during shipping and storage, and from that of concentrated nutritional values and proper balancing of the ration.
Food provides energy for bodily work and maintenance. It is the fuel for the human machine. ”

“ Metal can, glass container and plastic container manufacturers were each seeking to enlarge their sales to the thousands of packers of hundreds of varieties of food, chemical, toiletry and industrial products, ranging from ripe olives to fruit juices to tuna fish to smoked tongue ”

“ When by these or other means we convert vegetable tissue into dextrin and sugar, as it is naturally converted in the ripening pear, and as it has been artificially converted in our laboratories, we shall extend our food supplies in an incalculable degree. Swedes, turnips, mangold-wurzels, &c., will become delicate diet for invalids; horse beans, far more nutritious than beef; delicate biscuits and fancy pastry, as well as ordinary bread, will be produced from sawdust and wood shavings, plus a little leguminous flour to supplement the nitrogenous requirement. ”

“ Taking up the analysis of exports to other parts of the world, the figures show that of the exports to the United Kingdom 34.07 per cent was crude materials for use in manufacturing; 27.29 per cent foodstuffs partly or wholly manufactured, including in this group flour, meats, dried and preserved fruits, etc.; 15.46 per cent foodstuffs in a crude condition, and food animals; 13.1 per cent manufactures for further use in manufacturing, and 11.85 per cent manufactures ready for consumption. ”

“ I am all out of sympathy with second-hand food production as pork or beef or any meat products, as you know. One reason is that it is economically wrong as it takes many times more acreage to produce meat than vegetables for the same amount of food energy to be derived. ”

“ Cereals and sugar were already being imported by the two commissions. Under Lord Rhondda all bacon, ham, lard, cheese, butter and similar provisions, all oils and fats (edible and otherwise) , condensed milk, canned meat and fish, eggs, tea and even such extras as apples, oranges, jam and dried fruits, brought into this country, came to be directly imported by the Ministry of Food or requisitioned on arrival. All home-produced meat and cheese and most of the butter passed through the hands of the Ministry as also, through the control of flour-mills, did all the wheat and most of the barley. ”

“ Our remarkable food and fiber production links together 23 million Americans who are involved in growing, processing, and marketing hundreds of United States agricultural commodities. Our farmers and ranchers produce a wide variety of meat, fruits, vegetables, food grains, flowers, dairy products, fibers, fish, and livestock. ”

“ If you cannot grow vegetables, use them in abundance anyway. They are too perishable to ship abroad and too bulky, containing so much water that it would be an uneconomical use of shipping to export them. But the more America eats of almost any kind of vegetable or fruit, the less of the more durable, concentrated foods will she require. The products are so varied in kind and composition that they can be used to serve almost any purpose—beans and peas to save meat; potatoes and others to save wheat; sweet fruits to save sugar; jams, even, when spread on bread, to save fat. ”

“ From the sowing of crops to the purchasing of food and fiber in urban supermarkets, a network of farmers, agribusiness industries, carriers and shippers, scientists, retail distributors, and consumers has cooperated to ensure that our food supply is safe, affordable, and nutritious. As we gather with family and friends during this special week, let us give thanks for the blessings of our lives, for America's agricultural richness, and for the collaboration among rural and urban communities that makes so much of this bounty possible. ”

“ They follow naturally upon the development of immense cities housing millions of people, who necessarily must receive perishable foodstuffs produced at a great distance. To even a greater extent they are the product of countless ingenious methods devised mainly to render foods stable—drying, heating, the addition of preservatives—most of which accomplish their object, but incidentally rob the food of its essential vitamine. ”

“ In consequence of the immensely increased facilities of communication that we now enjoy, our own great food-producing dependencies and the vast corn-growing districts of other lands can pour their stores into our market—a process much aided by the successive removal of so many restrictions on commerce, and by the practical science which has overcome so many difficulties connected with the transport of slain meat and other perishable commodities. ”

“ As a result of campaigns for signed pledges, some 14,000,000 families, 7,000 hotels and public eating-places, and 425,000 retail dealers were enrolled in the United States as definitely pledged to the observance of the food conservation programme. Retail dealers in food were eventually required to limit their sale of wheat flour and to require the purchase of a certain specified proportion of substitutes as an accompaniment of every purchase of wheat flour. ”

“ One of the leading questions that directly affects the American cuisine is the contest now progressing as to the transportation of animal food to the great Eastern markets. Heretofore live cattle were transported to, and slaughtered at, the places of consumption. ”

“ In accordance with the direction of the foreign purchaser or his agent, meats and meat food products prepared for export may contain preservatives in proportions which do not conflict with the laws of the foreign country to which they are to be exported. ”

“ What Efficient Distribution Means LIVESTOCK producers are, of course, engaged in an absolutely indispensable industry. Of scarcely less importance is the packing business. For upon food production and preparation depend all other industries and activities.
But it is profitable and enlightening to ask, of what use would be production and preparation without means for delivering the food to the consumer? The mere asking brings realization of the prime importance of ample and uninterrupted transportation and distribution of packing house products to consumers through the retailers of the country. ”

“ Not only must the miller manufacture flour in accordance with new regulations, but the individual consumer must buy it under restrictions. To many people the first realization that war and food difficulties are necessarily associated, came with the announcement in the spring of 1918 of the now familiar rules for the purchase of flour. With every pound of white wheat flour, the purchaser must buy a pound of some other cereal; with every pound of Graham flour, three-fifths of a pound of other cereal. ”

“ It must be remembered that these percentages are given for the whole grain, and that the amounts of the nutrients in the manufactured product depend upon the process employed.
Manufacture of cereal food materials. [12] —The primitive method of making the material in the grain available for use was by grinding the grain between two stones, or by pounding one stone upon another, and this method is used by the Mexicans and certain of the American Indians to this day, human muscle being the power employed. ”

“ In the feeding of farm animals, it has been found that the mechanical condition of the food has a great influence upon its economic use. Rations that are either too bulky or too concentrated fail to give the best results. In the human ration, the mechanical condition of the food is equally as important as its chemical composition. ”

“ They are required for another purpose altogether, and the only way in which they will help the food supplies of the country is by setting free cereals which have now to be consumed in the production of a necessary article. ”

“ Although the cereals which compose Postum and Grape-Nuts are handled by heavy, modern, labor-saving machinery, nearly 600 people, all told, are employed. The factories run day and night. The capacity of the plant as it now stands is between six and seven million packages every month. That means food and drink for a great many people. ”

“ Dairy products, poultry and eggs, wool, hay, sugar, tobacco, fruits and vegetables from the farms, petroleum, gas, copper, stone and many other valuable mineral products, and the large annual quantity of imports of food products, manufactures and raw materials entering the seaports to be distributed among interior markets helped to swell the volume of traffic that moved from place to place within the country. ”